Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689)

Aphra Behn was the first professional woman writer in English literature, best
known for her plays and her novel 'Oroonoko'.
Aphra Johnson was born near Canterbury in 1640, and baptised on 14
December of that year. She is thought to have spent some of her youth in
Dutch Guiana in the West Indies. In 1664, she married Johan Behn a merchant
of Dutch or German parentage, but the marriage is not thought to have lasted
very long. She is known to have acted as a British spy in Antwerp in 1666.
Imprisonment for debt led her to write for an income.
Behn wrote a series of successful plays. Her first, 'The Forc'd Marriage' was
produced in 1671. 'The Rover' (1681), her most successful, was produced in
two parts and included in its cast Nell Gwyn, mistress of Charles II. Among
Behn's sources was the Italian commedia dell'arte (improvised comedy), which
she used in her farce 'The Emperor of the Moon' (1687), forerunner of the
modern-day pantomime.
Behn's novel 'Oroonoko' (1688) was the story of an enslaved African prince and
is now considered a foundation stone in the development of the English novel.
As well as plays and prose Behn wrote poetry and translated works from French
and Latin. In her time she was a celebrity, unusual for her independence as a
professional writer and her concern for equality between the sexes.
Behn died on 16 April 1689 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

/Aphra Behn- Poet Details/ 16401689

Aphra Behn, one of the most influential dramatists of the late seventeenth
century, was also a celebrated poet and novelist. Her contemporary reputation
was founded primarily on her "scandalous" plays, which she claimed would not
have been criticized for impropriety had a man written them. Behn's assertion
of her unique role in English literary history is confirmed not only by the
extraordinary circumstances of her writings, but by those of her life history as
well.
No one really knows her birth name or when exactly she was born. Her
parentage has been traced to Wye, and tradition has it that she was born in
1640. One version of her life postulates that her parents were a barber, John
Amis, and Amy, his wife. Another speculation about Behn has her the child of a
couple named Cooper. However, an essay by the unidentified "One of the Fair
Sex" affixed to the collection of The Histories And Novels of the Late Ingenious
Mrs. Behn (1696) maintains that Aphra was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John
Johnson of nearby Canterbury. Johnson was a gentleman related to Francis, Lord
Willoughby, who appointed him lieutenant general of Surinam, for which
Willoughby was the royal patentee. Whether Aphra was Johnson's natural child
or fostered by him is not known, but what has been established with
reasonable certainty was that in 1663 Aphra accompanied Johnson, his wife,
and a young boy, mentioned as Behn's brother, on a voyage to take up
residence in the West Indies. Johnson died on the way, and the mother and two
children lived for several months in Surinam. This episode was to have lasting
effects on Behn's life. Her most famous novel, Oroonoko (1688), is based on
her experiences there and her friendship with a prince of the indigenous
peoples. The facts about Behn's life after her return to England in 1664 are also
unclear. She is known to have met and taken the name of a man considered to
be her husband, who was perhaps a Dutch merchant whose name was either
"Ben," "Beane," "Bene," or "Behn." Whatever the true circumstances, from that
time on she was known publicly as "Mrs. Behn," the name she later used for
her professional writing. Aphra Behn was propelled into writing for a living by
the death of her husband in 1665, and her indebtedness as a result of her
employment as a spy for King Charles II.
When her husband died, Behn was left without funds. Perhaps because of her
association, through him, with the Dutch, she was appointed an intelligence
gatherer for the king, who was, at least, to pay for her trip to Antwerp as his
spy. But Charles did not respond to Behn's requests for money for her trip
home, so in December 1666 she was forced to borrow for her passage back to
England. Charles continued to refuse payment, and in 1668 Behn was thrown
into debtor's prison. The circumstances of her release are unknown, but in

1670 her first play, The Forc'd Marriage (published, 1671), was produced in
London, and Behn, having vowed never to depend on anyone else for money
again, became one of the period's foremost playwrights. She earned her living
in the theater and then as a novelist until her death on 16 April 1689.
Even before her arrest for indebtedness Aphra Behn had written poetry. These
early poems are not as polished as the later incidental poems or those from her
plays, but they indicate the versatility of her literary gifts and prefigure the skill
and grace that characterize all of Behn's verse. Although it was impossible to
make a living from writing poems exclusively, Behn, in the tradition of famous
English playwrights whose poetry was also accorded distinction, pursued verse
writing as an adjunct to her more lucrative work.
Behn's contemporary reputation as a poet was no less stunning than her
notoriety as a dramatist. She was heralded as a successor to Sappho, inheriting
the great gifts of the Greek poet in the best English tradition exemplified by
Behn's immediate predecessor, Katherine Philips. Just as Philips was known by
her pastoral nom de plume and praised as "The Matchless Orinda," so Behn
was apostrophized as "The Incomparable Astrea," an appellation based on the
code name she had used when she was Charles's spy.
Some of Behn's lyrics originally appeared in her plays, and there were longer
verses, such as the Pindaric odes, published for special occasions. But the
majority of her poetry was published in two collections that included longer
narrative works of prose and poetry as well as Behn's shorter verses. Poems
upon Several Occasions: with A Voyage to the Island of Love (1684) and
Lycidus: Or The Lover in Fashion (1688) reflect Behn's customary use of
classical, pastoral, courtly, and traditionally English lyric modes. Forty-five
poems appeared in Poems upon Several Occasions; ten poems were appended
to Lycidus. Ten more works appeared in the 1685 Miscellany. Posthumous
publications include poems in Charles Gildon's Miscellany Poems Upon Several
Occasions (1692) and in The Muses Mercury (1707-1708).
Behn's distinctive poetic voice is characterized by her audacity in writing about
contemporary events, frequently with topical references that, despite their
allegorical maskings, were immediately recognizable to her sophisticated
audience. Although she sometimes addressed her friends by their initials or
their familiar names, she might just as easily employ some classical or pastoral
disguise that was transparent to the initiated. Behn's poetry, therefore, was
less public than her plays or her prose fiction, as it depended, in some cases,
on the enlightened audience's recognition of her topics for full comprehension
of both the expression and implications of her verse. Such poetic technique
involved a skill and craft that earned her the compliments of her cohorts as one
who, despite her female form, had a male intelligence and masculine powers of

reason.
Behn's response to this admiration was to display even more fully those
characteristics which had earned her praise. Frequently her poems are
specifically addressed to members of her social community and might employ
mild satire as commentary, present events of their lives, and detail or explore
the emotional states of their frequently complex relationships, expecially those
of love and sex. Less commonly Behn might use a translation or adaptation of
another author's verse to discuss these issues in her own style. In these cases
the poems are frequently redrawn to reveal Behn's own emphases and display
more her artistic perspective than that of the original author.
Whatever the source of the texts, whether her plays, a political or personal
occasion, an adaptation or translation, or an emotional or psychological
exploration, Behn's verse style is particular and identifiable, with a very
distinctive voice. The speaker is usually identified as a character or as "Astrea,"
Behn's poetic self, and there is usually a specific audience. There may be
dialogue within a poem, but, unlike the dialogue in her plays, in the poetry the
voices are joined in lyrical rather than dramatic expression. In fact, the
musicality of Behn's verse is another identifying characteristic. Whereas many
of Behn's predecessors and contemporaries, including Philips, to whom Behn
was frequently compared, are known for the Metaphysical aspects of their
verse, Behn's poems are more classical, in the tradition of Ben Jonson rather
than John Donne. As such they rely more on the heritage of sixteenth-century
ornate lyricism as practiced by Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William
Shakespeare, along with the epigrammatic tradition of light Juvenalian satire in
Jonson and Robert Herrick, than the Marvellian wit and Miltonic grandeur of
later seventeenth-century verse. Behn shares with John Dryden a preference
for the couplet, but she also uses a modified ballad stanza and more varied
verse forms if the content permits. The decorum of her verse is based in a very
traditional relationship between structure and meaning, so that her discourse
has a sense of immediacy and directness despite the conventionality of her
literary forms. Perhaps it is because her use of vocabulary and form is so
traditional that Behn, who was in her lifetime criticized as outrageous for the
content of her works, was able, nevertheless, to thrive as a successful author.
The first of the Poems upon Several Occasions, "The Golden Age," presents
Behn's customary combination of tradition and innovation. It is described in the
text as "A Paraphrase on a Translation out of French," and although Behn
criticism usually emphasizes that the poem is a translation, Behn herself
presents rather more of the aspect of paraphrase. The poem restates wellknown concepts in a typically idiosyncratic way. Behn conventionally places her
paradise in a prelapsarian garden but then goes on to describe that sinless
state as devoid also of "civilized" constraints. Lovers' vows are "Not kept in fear

of Gods, no fond Religious cause, / Nor in obedience to duller Laws" but merely
for joy alone. Honor, rather than being perceived as a desirable characteristic,
is furiously attacked in two long verses as responsible for introducing the
shame and formality that "first taught lovely Eyes the art, / To wound, and not
to cure the heart." This, she maintains, is "a Cruel Law." She asserts that
women have sexuality and can teach men how to express their feelings if only
this false value, honor, were not in the way.
Business and the rules of honor are also rejected in favor of a natural and easy
"Love" in the poem "A Farewel to Celladon, On his Going into Ireland." These
verses ask Celladon why he bothers with boring government business ("To Toyl,
be Dull, and to be Great"), when he knows that success will not bring
happiness. It is more important, the speaker advises him, to enjoy the company
of his close good friend, Damon, to whom Celladon is "by Sacred Friendship
ty'd," and from whom "Love nor Fate can nere divide" him. The tradition of
close male friendships has both a literary and social history based in the
classics. In this "Pindarique," Behn elevates such a relationship over politics
and commerce. In her other poems as well, there is a precedence of close
personal relationships over public enterprise. The portrayal of many of these
relationships is in the classical pastoral tradition, and several of the poems also
present the classical concept of the person with attributes of both sexes, the
androgyne or hermaphrodite.
"Friendship" that is "Too Amorous for a Swain to a Swain" is the basis for one
section in the long poem describing Behn's social circle, "Our Cabal." The
verses on "Mr. Ed. Bed." describe the relationship between Philander and
Lycidas as conventionally androgynous, with implicit overtones of sexuality.
Philander, she writes, "nere paid / A Sigh or Tear to any Maid: / ... / But all the
Love he ever knew, / On Lycidas he does bestow."
Homoeroticism is standard in Behn's verse, either in descriptions such as these
of male to male relationships or in depictions of her own attractions to women.
Behn was married and widowed early, and as a mature woman her primary
publicly acknowledged relationship was with a gay male, John Hoyle, himself
the subject of much scandal. Behn was known to have had male lovers
throughout her lifetime, most notably the man allegorized as "Amintas" in her
verses, but she also writes explicitly of the love of women for each other. Just
as the emotional and physical closeness of males is justified by their
androgynous qualities, so, for women, hermaphroditic characteristics transcend
conventional boundaries by allowing the enjoyment of female and male
qualities in lovers.
The breaking of boundaries in poetry, as in her life, caused Behn to be
criticized as well as admired publicly. Her best-known poem, "The

Disappointment," finely illustrates Behn's ability to portray scandalous material

in an acceptable form. The poem was sent to Hoyle with a letter asking him to
deny allegations of ill conduct circulating about his activities. Both the letter
and the poem were reprinted in early miscellaneous collections. "The
Disappointment" has been traditionally interpreted to be about impotence. But
it is also about rape, another kind of potency test, and presents a woman's
point of view cloaked in the customary language of male physical license and
sexual access to females. The woman's perspective in this poem provides the
double vision that plays the conventional against the experiential.
One evening Lysander comes across Cloris in the woods. They are in love, and
he makes sexual advances. She resists and tells him to kill her if he must, but
she will not give up her honor, even though she loves him. He persists. She
swoons. He undresses her. She lies defenseless and fully exposed to him, but
he cannot maintain an erection. He tries self-stimulation without success. She
recovers consciousness, discovers his limp penis with her hand, recoils in
confusion, and runs away with supernatural speed. He rages at the gods and
circumstance but mostly directs his anger at Cloris, blaming her for his
impotence.
The traditional interpretation of this poem is that Cloris, having been aroused
by Lysander's advances, flees from him in shame and that the lovers are both
disappointed by Lysander's inability to consummate their relationship sexually.
But that is only one line of meaning in the poem. Embedded in the text is
another interpretation of these fourteen stanzas. Cloris is definite: she says
leave me alone or kill me. For her, defloration is a fate worse than death, and
she will not endure dishonor even for one she loves. When Lysander continues
to force her "without Respect," she lies "half dead" and shows "no signs of life"
but breathing. Traditionally her passion and breathlessness have been read as
sexual arousal, but they might just as easily be read as signs of her struggle to
escape Lysander, which exhausts her. As soon as her struggle ends, he is
"unable to perform." In the poem, even though Cloris is unconscious, Lysander
unsuccessfully tries self-stimulation, ostensibly to continue the attack. Cloris
awakens, however, and takes the first opportunity she has to run away from
him as fast as she can. Her decision to flee may clearly be seen as an attempt
to escape. When she sees the state of things, she shows no sympathy.
Lysander's anger is greater than mere disappointment--he rants at the gods
and the universe for his impotence and accuses Cloris of witchcraft. The extent
of his rage is more that of a thwarted assailant than an embarrassed lover.
For the first thirteen stanzas of the poem, the story is told in the third person,
with an omniscient speaker. But in the last verse, in a startling change of voice
to the first person, the speaker identifies herself with Cloris and closes the
narrative in sympathy with the "Nymph's Resentments," which the speaker, as

a woman, can "well Imagine" and "Condole." The usual interpretation of "The
Disappointment" will stand in a conventional reading, but this point of view
ignores a particularly female perspective that Behn clearly asserts when, in the
last stanza, she identifies with Cloris and not Lysander. The unconventionality
of this poem is apparent when it is contrasted with the presentation of joyous
amorous relations in some of Behn's other poems.
One of her best-known verses, happily juxtaposed to "The Disappointment," is
"Song: The Willing Mistriss." This poem describes how the female speaker
becomes so aroused by the excellent courtship of her lover that she is "willing
to receive / That which I dare not name." After three verses describing their
lovemaking, she concludes with the coy suggestion, "Ah who can guess the
rest?" The poem is a good example of Behn's treatment of conventional courtly
and pastoral modes, as is the "Song. Love Arm'd," which describes Cupid's
power to enamour.
Convention and ingenuity are further united in the poem "Song: The Invitation,"
where, witnessing Damon's pursuit of Sylvia, the speaker interposes herself to
meet "the Arrows" of love and save Sylvia "from their harms" because Sylvia
already has a lover and Damon would more appropriately be paired with the
speaker.
In her poems Behn uses the dramatic qualities of voice which gave her such
great stage success. Her verses are always spoken by a specific, identifiable
individual, whose self-characterization becomes clear in the text. The effect of
this technique is to give the poems a sense of immediacy and energy that
reveals Behn's personality through her works. She almost always speaks from
the point of view of a female, and her attitudes convey a woman's confidence
in dealing with men's amorous advances and betrayals. In the poem "A Ballad
on M. JH to Amoret, asking why I was so sad," the speaker tells how she was
betrayed by her lover, and she warns Amoret to be careful and be sure to get
the better of the man. Here the relationship between women is primary, as
they are allies on the same side of the war of love. Men are frequently shown
as enemies in the battle of the sexes, as Behn's poem "The Return" illustrates.
In it she warns a tyrannous shepherd not to stray, since "Some hard-hearted
Nymph may return you your own."
"The Reflection" is a classic song of betrayal with a twist. It is written from the
point of view of a woman who gave in to her lover. He used every means he
could to get her; then, the more she wanted him, the less he wanted her.
Although he made many vows, he betrayed her. Since her pain is too great for
tears, traditional consolation is inadequate; therefore, she will die. This poem is
a variation on the standard pastoral "lover's complaint" of the male:
conventionally the courtly beloved refuses to give in to her suitor, and he

proclaims he will die of lovesickness. This poem uses the conventional pastoral
mode, including the appeal to nature, to witness and participate in the lover's
grief. But although the woman's sorrow is conventional, the consequences of
betrayal are far more profound for her than they would be for a male
counterpart. She is, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word, "dis-maid,"
bereft of her maidenhood, and as one no longer virgin, banished from
consideration by future suitors. In her society there is nothing for her to look
forward to, so she may as well die.
In "To Alexis in Answer to his Poem against Fruition. Ode" Behn asserts that
men are only interested in conquest and that once they get what they want
from one woman, they go on to another. This point of view, as presented by a
male speaker, is also a highlight of the poems interspersed throughout the
prose text of Lycidus: Or The Lover in Fashion. The popular "A Thousand
Martyrs I have made" presents the philanderer's scorn for "the Fools that whine
for Love" in the context of the narrator's lighthearted appraisal of his
unreformed self. The speaker of the poem takes delight in his ability to play the
game of love in appearances only, exempting himself from serious hurt.
Because of his emotional detachment, ironically, he scores more conquests
than those for whom love is serious.
One of Behn's strongest statements on the failure of a double standard in
heterosexual love is "To Lysander, on some Verses he writ, and asking more for
his Heart then 'twas worth." This poem uses metaphors from banking and
investment to illustrate Lysander's materialism, and the speaker promises to
get even. She tells him to take back his heart, since he wants too much from
her for it. He does not want an equal or fair return (her heart for his heart) but
much more from her than he is willing to give. He does not allow her even to be
friendly with others, but, at the same time, he is cheating on her. She protests
that he gives her rival easily what she only gets with pain, and his intimacy
with another hurts her. She calls for fairness in love--if he takes such liberties,
she should be allowed them as well. If Lysander does not maintain honesty with
her, she warns, he will find that she can play a trick too. Her "P. S. A Song"
declares: "Tis not your saying that you love, / Can ease me of my Smart; / Your
Actions must your Words approve, / Or else you break my Heart."
Behn's poems express anticonventional attitudes about other topics as well.
She makes a strong antiwar statement in "Song: When Jemmy first began to
Love," concluding with the question of what is to become of the woman left
behind. In "To Mr. Creech (under the Name of Daphnis on his Excellent
Translation of Lucretius)," she praises the translator for making accessible to
unlearned women a work originally in Latin. As a member of the female class,
which is denied education in the classics, she would like, she says, to express
her admiration to him in an acceptable, manly fashion. Because she is a

woman, however, her response to his translation is not mere admiration, but a
fiery adoration, since women are thereby advanced to knowledge from
ignorance. She describes the state of women as her own: "Till now, I curst my
Birth, my Education, / And more the scanted Customes of the Nation: /
Permitting not the Female Sex to tread, / The mighty Paths of Learned Heroes
dead."
Behn writes, then, as the representative of all women, allying herself openly
with women against men in the war conventionally called love. She tells her
friend Carola, "Lady Morland at Tunbridge," that even though she is a rival for
Behn's lover, when she saw her, she grew to admire and love her. Because of
that, she warns, beware of taking my lover as your own--he is experienced and
can slip the chains of love. You deserve a virgin, she says, someone who has
never loved before, who only has eyes for you and has a "soul as Great as you
are Fair."
Women uniting to oppose a faithless male lover is the theme of Behn's
entertainment, "Selinda and Cloris," in which the title characters befriend each
other in order to deal with betrayal. First Selinda is warned by Cloris about
Alexis, who was untrue to her. Selinda's response is to ally herself with the
other woman and vow that Alexis will not conquer her as he did Cloris. The
women praise each other's generosity and intelligence, agreeing to be good
friends. The reciprocal relationship between the women includes both physical
and intellectual attraction, friendship, and sexuality. Cloris "will sing, in every
Grove, / The Greatness of your Mind," to which Selinda responds, "And I your
Love." They trade verses and sing together just as traditional pastoral speakers
do. In this case, however, in addition to being poets, lovers, singers, and
shepherds, the speakers are also, untraditionally, female. The celebration of
their mutual joy is a variant on the conventional masque of Hymen, and it
presents in song and dance a formal poetic drama that emphasizes the
eroticism of the women's relationship.
The bonding of women in female friendship is most clearly stated by Behn in
her explicitly lesbian love poem, "To the fair Clarinda, who made Love to me,
imagin'd more than woman." This is the last of the poems appended to Lycidus,
and in it Behn shows how important to her were those androgynous qualities
for which she herself was praised. Just as she was commended in the
dedicatory verses of her Poems upon Several Occasions for having "A Female
Sweetness and a Manly Grace," Behn asserts the unity of "masculine" and
"feminine" characteristics in her "beloved youth." She cleverly argues that she
"loves" only the "masculine" part of Clarinda and to the "feminine" gives
merely friendship. Since Clarinda's perfection manifests the idealized Platonic
form, loving her cannot and should not be resisted. Further, since that by which
society defines sex is not found in the female form, that is, women do not have

the necessary physical equipment to consummate what is culturally considered

"the sex act," love between women is, by definition, "innocent," and therefore
not subject to censure. Clarinda is a hermaphrodite, a "beauteous Wonder of a
different kind, / Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join'd."
The poem may be read as the speaker's justification of her own approach to a
forbidden beloved, but Clarinda is not a passive fair maiden. She is the one
who, the title states, "made Love" to the speaker, and, in the last quatrain, her
"Manly part ... wou'd plead" while her "Image of the Maid" tempts. Clarinda,
therefore, may also be seen as the initiator of their sexual activity, with the
speaker justifying her own response in reaction to the public sexual mores of
her time. As the poem ends, Behn, in a witty pun on her first name, asserts the
multigendered sexuality of both Clarinda and the speaker, and "the noblest
Passions do extend / The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend."
The complexity of Behn's verse, its logical argument, pastoral and courtly
conventions, biblical and classical allusions, and incisive social comment define
a unique poetic vision. Through the centuries, interest in at least some of her
poetry has been maintained.
Aphra Behn's later reputation as a playwright, novelist, and poet has benefited
from her value as a model for women writers as noted first by those
distinguished Victorian women of letters, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf.
Sackville-West's early biography (1927) and Woolf's memorializing of Behn in A
Room of One's Own (1929) as the first woman in England to earn her living by
writing place Behn foremost in feminist literary history. Where she was
previously criticized, today she is lauded, her poetry, along with her novels and
plays, achieving the status it rightly deserves.
Arlene Stiebel, California State University, Northridge

THE LIFE OF APHRA BEHN

Much conjecture and little tangible knowledge exists for a biography of Aphra
Behn.
She was born Aphra Johnson, possibly in Canterbury, in December, 1640. 1 Of
her education, nothing is known conclusively. She probably lived in Surinam
1663-4, returned to London, and perhaps married a "Mr. Behn" in 1664, though
no records survive. The same supposed Mr. Behn probably died in 1665, though
some have suggested Aphra may never have been married at all,2 only taken
on the guise of "Mrs." for propriety and protection's sake. From 1666-7 Aphra
Behn served King Charles II as a spy in Antwerp, Netherlands, incurring debts in
her work, which unpaid (as Charles II was notoriously slow in remitting
payments) she served a stint in debtors' prison.
After this experience, Aphra Behn apparently left the world of espionage behind
for the theatre. Her first performed play was The Forc'd Marriage, 1670, by The
Duke's Company. The play was a popular and financial success an
encouraging start. 1671 saw the performance of The Amorous Prince, and by
1672 Behn even edited Covent Garden Drollery, a poetic miscellany.3 Many
plays followed: The Dutch Lover (1673), Abdelazar, (1676), The Town Fop,
(1676), The Debauchee, (1677), and The Counterfeit Bridegroom, (1677).
In March, 1677, Aphra Behn's play The Rover was produced. It was probably
her most successful play, and to this day her best known. Nell Gwyn, the famed
actress and mistress to King Charles II, came out of retirement to play the role
of the whore, Angelica Bianca ('white angel'). The Duke of York (later James II)
was also said to have admired the play.
The success of The Rover was succeeded by Sir Patient Fancy (1678), with Nell
Gwyn again in the lead, as Lady Knowell, and The Feigned Courtesans (1679),
which Behn dedicated to Nell Gwyn. The plays were becoming increasingly
risqu sexually, and Behn herself was accused of being a libertine. This
perception was doubtless reinforced by her friendship with the Earl of
Rochester, infamous for his sexual escapades and explicit poetry.

Women in the theatre, in general, had always been accused of practising the
oldest profession in the world growing success was accompanied by envy,
and a woman in a traditionally male profession was subject to attack. In 1683,
playwright Robert Gould wrote of Behn and her fellow woman writers, notably
Mary Villiers (Ephelia): "Punk and Poetess agree so Pat,/ You cannot well be
This, and not be That.4 And yet nothing would deter Aphra Behn from writing.
The tragicomedy The Young King was produced in the autumn of 1679, The
Revenge in 1680, followed by The Second Part of The Rover in early 1681, The
False Count in November and The Roundheads in December, 1681. The City
Heiress was produced in the spring of 1682. While Behn's plays were generally
popular with their audiences, she encountered criticism from contemporaries
and later readers alike for the rampant sexual content. Alexander Pope, for
instance, wrote of Behn:
The stage how loosely does Astrea tread
Who fairly puts all characters to bed.5
Like Father, Like Son of 1682 was a flop of such magnitude it did not warrant
publication and the manuscript no longer survives. Behn was arrested for a
libellous prologue, but was soon released. At this point, the Duke's Company
merged with the King's Company to form the United Company, and playwriting
no longer offered a profitable avenue of employ for Aphra Behn, who turned to
other forms of writing.
Soon after, Aphra Behn finished her first book of poetry, which appeared as
Poems Upon Several Occasions in 1684. 1684 also saw the publication of Love
Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, a Roman clef loosely based on
a contemporary affair, and a pioneer on the field of the epistolary novel. Both
works were enormously popular and went through several contemporary
printings. Love Letters even had two sequels: Love Letters Between a
Nobleman and His Sister, Second Part (1685), and The Amours of Philander and
Silvia, (1687).
Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded to the throne by his brother, the
Duke of York, as James II. Behn, like other writers of the day, wrote verses on
both occasions, and published another poetic miscellany. Additionally, Behn
returned to writing for the stage. The Lucky Chance was performed in 1686 and
published in 1687, to be followed by the farce The Emperor of the Moon, which
was not successful.
In 1688, Behn published the work for which she is chiefly known today:
Oroonoko, a short novel about a noble slave and his tragic love. The novel,
which may have been based partly on first-hand experiences or stories the
author heard in Surinam, was the first English work in print to express

sympathy for slaves. It was an instant success, going through many reprints,
and was even adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne in 1695. Oroonoko
also appeared in Three Histories, 1688. The novellas included The Fair Jilt and
Agnes de Castro.
James II, who had never been popular as king, and was swiftly treading towards
the fate of his father, Charles I. He was made to abdicate the throne in what
has come to be known as the "Glorious Revolution" in December, 1688.
Aphra Behn, who had been a loyal supporter of James, was by this time ill. Her
own descriptions of her lame hands and the lampoonists' cruel verses mocking
her "limbs distortured" suggest she suffered severely from rheumatoid arthritis
in her last years, but kept writing in despite of the pain. Aphra Behn died on
April 16, 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where her
stone still rests today at Poets' Corner not an inconsiderable honor for a
woman playwright in the late seventeeth-century. Two of her plays, The
Widdow Ranter and The Younger Brother, were produced and published
postuhumously.
Chiefly remembered for Oroonoko and her play The Rover, Aphra Behn herself
wanted to be remembered as a poet. Current interest in woman writers of the
Early Modern period has resuscitated interest in Behn, and prompted many
new editions of her works. Aphra Behn's poetry was vibrant and robust, and
several poems merit rememberance of her as a poet: "Love Arm'd" is
frequently anthologized, "The Disappointment" is often discussed in
comparison with Rochester's "The Imperfect Enjoyment", and A Paraphrase on
Oenone to Paris induced even Dryden to praise it and publish it in his Ovids
Epistles, 1680.
Although Aphra Behn's contemporaries, and the prudish eras after, vilified and
belittled her accomplishments as a writer due to her rampant and unapologetic
use of sexual subjects, current critics can judge her on her merits alone. While
she was preceded by numerous female writers, notably Katharine Philips and
Margaret Cavendish, Behn was the first to consider herself a writer by
profession, one "forced to write for Bread and not ashamed to owne it."6 Her
career did break ground for the women who came after, which prompted
Virginia Woolf's now-famous lines:
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon
the tomb of Aphra Behn, ...for it was she who earned
them the right to speak their minds.7

1. O'Donnell, Mary Ann. "Aphra Behn: The Documentary Record."

The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. Cambridge: CUP, 2004. 1.
2. Blashfield, E. W. "Aphra Behn." Portraits and Backgrounds. New York: C.
Scribner's Sons, 1917. 162.
3. Salzman, Paul. "Chronology." Aphra Behn. Oxford University Press, 1994.
4. Gould, Robert. A Satyrical Epistle, 1683.
5. Pope, Alexander. Imitations of Horace, 1737.
6. Behn, Aphra. "Preface." Sir Patient Fancy, 1678.
7. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own, 1928.